At the bottom of a chipped shed at the foot of the estuary, next to Con de Sido beach, in Cambados (Pontevedra), the researchers came across one of the jackpots that once again surrounds José Ramón Prado Bugallo, alias Miñanco site, one of the historic Galician narcos. At the back of the building, headquarters of the Astilleros Facho limited company, linked to the suspect himself, they found black plastic and a gate designed to keep prying eyes at bay. Behind, a whole arsenal for the drug trafficking business was hidden: a blue 16.47 meter long boat with five outboard engines for a total of 1,300 horsepower; and a gray semi-rigid, baptized as First Lady, 12 meters long and with four engines of 350 horsepower each. The agents no longer had doubts: Sito had returned to the drug trade.
Operation Mito, directed by the National Court, has returned Miñanco to the pages of the newspapers. After four years of investigation, Judge María Tardón processed him last Friday along with 45 other people – including Gonzalo Boye, who was his lawyer, also known for representing former Catalan presidents Carles Puigdemont and Quim Torra -, accused of belonging and collaborating with an organization set up by the Galician narco himself while he was still serving a sentence for his crimes in a social insertion center in Algeciras, where he remained in semi-liberty: in the mornings he worked in a parking company. A band with supposed contacts in Colombia, the Netherlands and Turkey; that it operated in Galicia, Campo de Gibraltar, the Costa del Sol or Madrid; and to which the agents came to intercept almost four tons of cocaine in a ship near the Azores and in a container stacked in a warehouse in Den Hoorn, in the north of Holland.
A whole network allegedly directed by Miñanco with a very “personalist” style, as the magistrate says. He was in charge and wanted to make it clear, according to the summary. “Each and every one of the decisions was adopted or supervised by him,” sums up María Tardón, head of Investigative Court 3 of the National High Court. The historic Galician narco, who supposedly adopted the code name “Mario” for this plot, discussed everything from the details of the collection of the merchandise – such as the date or specific time of the unloading – to the failures that the organization detected in their communication systems or, even, the excess fuel in the boats they used. Sito didn’t want anyone to lift a finger without him knowing. “Here things are done my way,” he said in the series Farina the actor who played his character. Traced.
“He was extremely control over the activities of his subordinates,” continues the instructor Tardón in one of his files, where he describes how he transmitted to his subordinates an important maxim: that they keep absolute “confidentiality” of the communications they maintained between them. The retailer Miñanco was at the top and was watching them.
But Sito, due to the sentence he was still serving, had limited his movements. In addition, he did not want to raise the suspicions of the Police. So he had to delegate. Two of his most trusted men then come into play: Colombian Luis Enrique García Arango, alias Alan, The old O The old man, one of his former lieutenants; and Juan Antonio Fernández Fernández, known as Chus O Nuria, who was paid by Astilleros Facho as a cover, since there “he did not perform any work activity”. To both, convicted along with the Galician in 2006 for another drug trafficking network, he “entrusted the details” of the operations. Arango also allegedly kept payments and criminal accounting.
These three were dedicated to making decisions, but the pyramid had more steps. According to the summary, David Pérez was in charge of preparing the operations, The boy; and José Antonio González, Cherokee. Francisco Peña, Paco, and Antonio Palma, Towel, acted as bodyguards for Sito when he was traveling. And Fernando Prado, Pocholo, and his son Marcos were the “expert boat pilots” in charge of introducing drugs to the Galician coast.
The structure attributed to Miñanco also had a network of its own companies to supposedly launder money —Astilleros Facho, a car rental company called Vicmar, and the real estate agency San Saturnino. He also resorted to third-party companies that supported him and a system of “human couriers” that traveled to Colombia with cash on top to hide it. They moved hundreds of thousands of euros. When Sito was arrested in February 2018, the agents found him in a two-story villa with a pool that he used in Algeciras for 377,320 euros in cash. They were hidden inside a couch, in a plastic bag.
The 10,000 euros that dot Boye
Since he was processed last Friday, Gonzalo Boye has not stopped defending his innocence backed by an important sector of the Catalan independence movement, which considers him persecuted for representing leaders of the process. “They are going for you, they are going for us”, supported Laura Borràs, head of the Junts list in the next Catalan elections. The judge considers Miñanco’s collaborating lawyer for allegedly forging, together with another lawyer, documentation to recover money that the Police intercepted one of the gang’s “human couriers”. According to the investigations, the organization was going to pay them 90,000 euros for those papers, “30,000 when the documents were presented, of which Boye received 10,000” allegedly in a meeting with members of the plot.
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